“White Winter Hymnal,” directed by Sean Pecknold, is a stop motion music video for Seattle-based Fleet Foxes. While I enjoy slickly crafted computer animation as much as the next person, there’s something especially refreshing nowadays about seeing a rough-around-the-edges piece of stop motion in which the artist’s hand can be felt in every frame.

JibJab’s latest political music video premiered last night on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and it’s another winner. Co-Director Evan Spiridellis tells us:

I think you’ll notice that we significantly upped the production value while trying to remain true to the original thing that made This Land work - funny collage heads. It was also really important to us was not to repeat ourselves so rather than the tit-for-tat that was in This Land we wanted to make this a true character piece and give each player a verse to try and define themselves. (It was a real challenge trying to sum up each candidate with only 5 lines!)

Evan and Gregg have also written a great production blog on the making of this particular film.

“Kaiserwetter” is a distinctive looking video for German musician Olli Schulz directed by Benjamin Leng of HickPix. Leng tells us, “I made the video together with illustrator Niklas Hughes in a six-week period, combining hand drawn backgrounds with computer animation in After Effects.”

Joel Trussell has directed a second video for the English band Morcheeba, based on their single “Gained the World.” Animation leaves a lot to be desired and visual pacing is disconnected from the flow of the song, but design and color are typically pretty Trussell. It’d be great to see his visual sensibility applied to stronger animation and direction one of these days. Video credits on Trussell’s blog.

Nick Uff’s new videos for Portishead songs “The Rip” and “We Carry On” are two of my favorite pieces of animation so far this year. This article from the Bournemouth Echo says that the 44-year-old Uff makes his living as a gardener, which helps to explain why I’ve never heard of him or seen his beautiful hand-drawn animation before. The lo-fi look is authentic; Uff shoots all his work on 16mm. He says about his work, “I don’t storyboard my ideas, but let the films go where they take themselves. There’s all sorts of ideas in there - things that have happened, a bit of social comment - like a stream of consciousness you could say. Each frame has to be different, animated films cannot stand still. That means they can be quite difficult on the eye, especially in the style I use, it’s very busy, a bit scratchy.”

“The Rip”

“We Carry On”

Dutch director and animator Fons Schiedon, previously featured on Cartoon Brew and quickly becoming a favorite director of mine, just finished a lovely looking music video for Amsterdam-based band VOICST. Schiedon tells me, “The video was completed in just about five weeks from animatic to final (a schedule that leans towards insanity I must admit), working with basically the same compact team that previously worked with me on the MTV ASIA Mobbed series (2006). Technically, we’re looking at cel-style Flash-animation and Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop/Maya backgrounds in an AfterEffects composite.” The character animation was created by Brazilian studio Birdo. Watch the video and read a ‘making-of’ on Fons’ site.

One of the most rewarding parts of running Cartoon Brew is hearing from artists who are inspired by the items that we post here. Here are letters from two regular readers who have recently completed short animated pieces. The first letter is from Jerry Pyle:

“my friend, dion labriola and i just finished a music video for singer/songwriter daniel ahearn. we employed a few animation techniques that i thought you might be interested in seeing. in addition to the flash animation you see at the beginning, middle and end of the video, we used cut out animation for much of the song and for the chorus, we used an “eight-frame-fade” technique where we printed out every eighth frame, stapled them all together and nailed them to a pole outside, ripping off each frame and rephotographing it. the look suprised us.

“i’m a big fan of cartoon brew. you’ve turned me on to a lot of great animation both new and old and its a daily destination for me on the web. i’m sending along this link so you can put the video on the brew if you like. and also to show you what you in some way have inspired. thanks.”

The next letter is from John Brown (aka Jaye Bhee):

I’m an aspiring animator, busting my hump to put myself through animation courses (animation mentor, more specifically), and I’m so grateful to have cartoon brew as an enormous inspirational “bottomless well” of inspiration and history (I am obsessed with classic black and white cartoons)…

I’ve even done a sort of faux-homage (fauxmage?) to classic animation myself. It’s my first real try at a do-it-yourself animation (a la Bill Plympton), but I find it extremely rewarding (but exhausting, haha).

Anywho, if you have a free 2 minutes, feel free to check it out. If not, just know that what you’re doing is of incredible importance to beginners like me, and you guys provide constant inspiration. Thanks a quadrillion!

Thanks to several of our readers, I’ve just caught up with this music video from French music group, Justice. It’s directed by Jonas and François, a directing team at production company 75 in Paris. The art director and designer is So Me of Ed Banger Records. This creative team was also behind Kanye West’s The Good Life. Check that one out too.

(Thanks, Kelly Toon and Brad Constantine)

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